Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Top 10 Allergy Free Valentines

Are
you looking for a crafty, creative valentine to make with your kiddo? A
non-food valentine or at least a valentine that if free of the Top 8
Allergens?

Well, hopefully you will find an idea or two here or
get inspired to create your own. These are my Top 10 Allergy Friendly
Valentines and I'm glad I didn't have to choose which one to do. My
kids got that job and now they can't wait to share them with their
classmates.

1. Rainbow Loom Valentine - found at Stitch Craft Creations. There is also a really cute Olympic Valentine on this site.

10. Freezie Pop Valentine -
Josie has fallen in love with penquins recently, it may be all of the
cold weather getting to her. She wanted to find a penguin valentine.
We found this cute little penguin valentine that says "Let's Chill" and
made them into a freezie pop holder. They are free of the Top 8
Allergens but do contain food dyes. Health food stores often carry
freezie pops without artificial coloring (however, they may be
seasonal). My little girl was so excited to make these and the freezie
pops were not easy to find since we live in the middle of a winter
wonderland, but I was on the hunt. After a several stops, one of our
grocery stores had the big box of 100 in the back of the store...whew!

Ok...so I have a couple more valentine's to share with you...

11. Olaf Valentine - we found this adorable idea/printable at One Creative Mommy.
To make them allergy friendly...we used gluten free pretzels and Enjoy
Life Mini Chocolate Chips. The candy corn did contain egg whites so Mom
put those in after my daughter did the rest of the assembling. Another
nose option without eggs is using an orange gummy candy and cut it in
the shape needed.

Confession time: Anna was extremely
excited about passing these out. We sat together and assembled them all
and then while speaking to our school nurse, she very kindly reminded
me we can't pass out homemade treats. DUH! Oh my word, I felt just
horrible. I felt bad that Anna couldn't pass them out to her class but
felt even worse, that I, the mother of a severely food allergic child
and food allergy advocate who knows better, almost brought these in,
which would have been against the rules. Rules they have established to
try to help protect kids with food allergies during class parties. I
guess we all make mistakes from time to time. I'm so thankful she reminded me before
we brought them into school. This almost-oops has given me more
compassion for families without food allergies and the efforts they make
to help protect kids with food allergies. And on the bright side, we
had a whole bunch assembled that we could share with the school office
staff and they were tinkled pink about them.

So what did Anna do? Thankfully, we had a ton of freezie
pops leftover, so we used those with her valentines. It was a great
learning experience for myself and my daughter.

32 comments:

I have 3 non-candy valentines over on my blog too! http://www.firefliesandjellybeans.com/2014/02/3-non-candy-dollar-store-valentines.html Feel free to check them out if you have time... We choose to do a non-candy option to avoid allergies too! : )

Welcome to Hope's Kitchen!

Welcome to Hopes Kitchen. I hope you find these recipes helpful. Our family eats free of gluten, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, kiwi and artificial food coloring due to food allergies.
I would like to share with you what I've learned over the years to help you on your journey and help you find some hope again in your kitchen.

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